RANDOLPH STILL SWINGING WITH THE PGA'S BEST.

Byline: KAREN CROUSE

There are butchers and bakers and cabinet makers who are coming off more lucrative years than golfer Sam Randolph. The former USC star grossed $30,434 on the Nike Tour in 1997 and was feeling stigmatized by his failure to bring home bigger bucks.

``I was beginning to wonder if I wanted to do this any more,'' said Randolph, who was shaken by his inability to play his way into last winter's PGA Tour qualifying school, stung by the ``Can't-Miss Kid who Did'' label slapped on him by one national golf magazine and saddened by all his so-called friends who have been going around whispering that his best days are behind him.

Then he took a good look around his galleries and realized there are bankers and CEOs and other affluent Joes who would give their first million to be able to trade places with him and he decided that no matter what his scorecard or bank balance says, his isn't such a bad life, after all.

``I'm still doing my favorite thing,'' Randolph said. ``I know people are talking behind my back and saying I'm all washed up. But it's not like there's some script that's supposed to cover my career and I goofed it up.''

That's not entirely true. Such a script does exist. Its working title: I am Tiger Woods.

In the bleachers behind the Olympic Club driving range Wednesday sat patrons with clubhouse badges who would have killed to trade places with Randolph if only because they would have been that much closer to Woods, the latest in a long line of players earmarked for greatness.

He was launching missiles a few spots away from Randolph, the one who stirred the patrons' dry martinis the last time the U.S. Open was held here, 11 years ago.

Randolph will tee it up in his sixth U.S. Open today as a prohibitive underdog, but back then he was a first-year touring pro being touted as the next Jack Nicklaus. Somewhere along the way he started looking like another Jack Renner. But in June of 1987 the fogbank that would roll in and settle over his career was nowhere on the horizon.

Randolph weathered a two-stroke penalty for slow play during the second round at the Lake Course to finish in a tie for 43rd. Three months later he would set a 54-hole tournament record that still stands to win the rain-shortened Bank of Boston Classic, one of five top-10 finishes he'd record on his way to grossing $180,378.

Randolph, 33, would have another decent year in 1988, cracking the $100,000 mark in earnings without the benefit of a win. He couldn't have known it then, but the victories would dry up faster than fresh leads in the murders of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

The only first-place finish of any consequence Randolph has recorded since 1987 came at the U.S. Open sectional qualifying round in Clovernook Country Club in Cincinnati earlier this month when he posted the low 36-hole total in the field of 69. His breakthrough went largely unnoticed as disabled golfer Casey Martin rolled in a 25-foot birdie putt on the second playoff hole to secure the fifth and final spot.

The anonymity suits Randolph fine. The best years of his career might have coincided with Madonna's but, unlike her, he didn't go out of his way to make sure you noticed.

Randolph was a shining star because of his talent, which carried him to one Junior World title, 13 collegiate crowns, the 1985 U.S. Amateur Championship and the 1985 Fred Haskins Trophy, golf's version of the Heisman.

When Randolph revisits his past - something he is loath to do these days because it's like inviting jubilation to dinner and having depression drop in for a nightcap - he remembers mostly how he played for the sheer pleasure of it.

He aimed for the pins and let the putts fall where they may. It wasn't until the first cracks appeared in his game that winning replaced the flagstick as Randolph's focal point. That was when the expectations that everybody else had pinned on him became his own.

His father Sam Sr., a teaching pro in Santa Barbara who is now retired, had bestowed upon Randolph a swing that was long on feel and short on instruction. Randolph, in what he admits was as much an act of rebellion as a quest for a higher (swing) plane of consciousness, sought second, third and fourth opinions. What he wound up with was a swing short on feel and long on instruction.

``After a few years of doing pretty good, I wanted to do a little better,'' Randolph said. ``I started to take a little advice here and there. Instead of just going out and playing, I was always thinking about how to improve myself.''

The more he tinkered with his swing, the less confidence he had in it. He couldn't shake this thought: If his swing was dependable, why was he changing it?

As his scores soared, shoulders to lean on were harder to come by than birdies. Players who had been his best pals in college, guys he had grown close to his first few years on the PGA Tour, fringe people who had attached themselves to him when he came out of USC, virtually disappeared after Randolph lost his playing privileges on the PGA Tour in 1991.

That's why when Australian Steve Elkington, a college rival out of Houston, stopped and gave Randolph a warm handshake on the driving range Wednesday, it really meant a lot.

Before the week's over, there could be handshakes all around. After missing the first six cuts on the Nike Tour, Randolph has finished in ties for 12th, eighth and sixth in his last three events. He feels good about his game, and more important, himself.

``Now I feel like I have nothing to lose,'' Randolph said. ``I'm not worried what anybody thinks. I don't feel that pressure. I can just go out there and play.''